Thames Water Rapped For Road Repair Delay

A UTILITY company has been warned to get its act together after over-running works caused a morning of traffic misery in Isleworth.

Thames Water engineers were given clearance by Hounslow Council to carry out valve replacements at Busch Corner last Friday night (31).

The area in question is the crossroads of the busy Twickenham Road and London Road and involved temporary traffic lights at all four junctions.

The company was given a strict instruction to have cleared the site by 7am at the latest the following morning.

However, the deadline came and went and by the time the Saturday rush hour began to gather pace it was clear the temporary lights were having a massively negative effect.

Long tailbacks of cars were seen stretching well past West Middlesex Hospital towards South Street, past the Syon Park estate into the centre of Brentford, and up past the already congested Great West Road at Gillette Corner.

Eventually trucks arrived and the crossroads was finally restored to normal at 1pm - six hours later than expected.

One witness who did not want to be named said: “It was absolute madness to have temporary traffic lights at all four junctions.

“That area can barely cope at the best of times and while it might have been ok if only one road was affected any more than that was always going to be a nightmare.

“The most frustrating part of it was that there was no actual work going on at the time, there was no-one around at all.

“It’s not on for Thames Water to just be able to cause chaos like this whenever it wants and get away with it.”

Hounslow Council appears to agree as Rob Gillespie, director of Hounslow Highways, it’s road maintenance arm said: “Thames Water has been warned to avoid any further breach of the conditions of works as they can cause unnecessary disruption to traffic and result in financial penalties being applied.”

A spokeswoman for Thames Water blamed the problem on a miscommunication between its team that carries out the work and another that puts the road back afterwards.

She added: “We’re really sorry to people affected by our over-running work. We know this is unacceptable and we will be learning from this to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”